Abstract

The traditional internally-focused operations management role is ill-adapted to meet the needs of 21st century business. Problems associated with ‘reductionism’ and driving forces in the external business environment demand that operations management adopts a more strategic stance and emphasises optimisation of the entire operations system in order to meet a wider range of increasingly challenging performance objectives. This defines an expanded and more strategic role for the operations manager that requires changes in organisational ‘infrastructure’ to be implemented, modified operations management curricula to be designed and new research questions on the reconciliation of theory with practice to be addressed.